Episode 469 Show Notes

Welcome to mintCast

the Podcast by the Linux Mint Community for All Users of Linux

This is Episode 469!

Recorded on Sunday, September 28, 2025.

… Joe; … Moss; Pulling my hair out, I’m Bill; hopping around I’m Majid; … Eric, … To be 45 YO again-I’m Charles, now with LEDs, I’m Jim

— Play Standard Intro —

  • First up in the news: LMDE 7 ‘Gigi” BETA released,
  • In security and privacy:
  • Then in our Wanderings:
  • In our Innards section:
  • In Bodhi Corner,
  • And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
  • Please remember if you want to follow along with our discussions, the full show notes for this episode are linked in the show’s description at mintcast.org/show-notes

— Play News Transition Bumper —

The News

20 minutes

  • LMDE 7 ‘Gigi” BETA released
    • From the Mint blog (via londoner)
    • On Thursday September 18, the latest version of LMDE, number 7 code-named ‘Gigi”, was released as a BETA.
    • Release Notes
    • This BETA release might contain critical bugs, please only use it for testing purposes and to help the Linux Mint team fix issues prior to the stable release.
    • It will be possible to upgrade from this BETA to the stable release. Upgrade instructions will be published after the stable release.
  • AI

Charles

Vivaldi takes a stand: keep browsing human

https://vivaldi.com/blog/keep-exploring

Vivaldi argues that embedding AI assistants in browsers threatens active, curious web exploration by turning users into passive consumers and undermining the open web, publisher traffic, and user autonomy. The company commits to resisting AI features like chatbots or auto-summarizers unless they support privacy and intellectual property without diminishing the user’s freedom to explore online.

“We’re taking a stand, choosing humans over hype, and we will not turn the joy of exploring into inactive spectatorship. Without exploration, the web becomes far less interesting. Our curiosity loses oxygen and the diversity of the web dies.”

    Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Vivaldi

— Play Security Transition Bumper —

Security and Privacy

Charles

Mississippi’s Age Assurance Law – Upheld by the supreme court in Aug. As a result Blue social network has suspended services in Mississippi

https://www.pcmag.com/news/supreme-court-lets-mississippi-age-verification-law-go-into-effect-for

https://bsky.social/about/blog/08-22-2025-mississippi-hb1126

Possible Solution for Age verification –

TrueAge

https://www.mytruage.org/faq.html#what-is-truAge

Flawed it has personal identifiable information, the state of California is uses it for storing a digital copy of drivers licenses

using biometrics.

https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-1040-notes.pdf

NPM Packages Security Breach

NPM – The standard package manager for Node.js (Java script libraries/Software)

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-hijack-npm-packages-with-2-billion-weekly-downloads-in-supply-chain-attack

  • In a supply chain attack, attackers injected malware into NPM packages with over 2.6 billion weekly downloads after compromising a maintainer’s account in a phishing attack.

Mitigation – All users  requested to update their Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) credentials. Our records indicate that it has been over 12 months since your last 2FA update on github.

“To maintain the security and integrity of your account, we kindly ask that you complete this update at your earliest convenience. Please note that accounts with outdated 2FA credentials will be temporarily locked starting September 10, 2025, to prevent unauthorized access.”

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Linux Wanderings

30 minutes (~5-8 minutes each)

  • Joe
    • Doing the migration of the drives in my DAS from my garage computer to my mini rack slowly as I do not want to break anything. I have transferred one of the drives over after a couple of rough starts that I talked about last time. But now it is a share that I was able to attach ti the proxmox from the openmediavault and get to it from the garage pc using credentials and fstab.
    • I moved several tb worth of data onto and I had started the process of pointing the different lxcs to it to start using it for data and realized that there was no write permissions because the lxc’s are unprivileged
    • I understand the need for security in this but it does make things difficult. I tried fixing things the “right” way but because the NAS server is one of the VM’s I can’t really use fstab to make things work. Or use @reboot in crontab the way I have with some of the other shares on other PC’s.
    • I was able to do a short term work around with my garage PC since it is able to robustly connect to the share and provide a share back to the LXC’s. This is a terrible solution as it goes from the mini pc to the garage pc and then back again to the mini pc.
    • I tested a couple of different solutions to make sure that it would reconnect everything on reboot. I tried the fstab and the crontab and neither of those did the job without help on reboot.
    • I then did some research and found out about hookscripts which can be added to different phases of a startup or shutdown of an LXC or a VM and went to work. You can do this in either bash or perl but the documentation for both kind of sucks. I should mention that it allows for the running of scripts on the host machine not in the container.
    • I decided to do it in perl since the setup for it was a little more straightforward and the example file was in perl. The first thing I did was a simple mount which did not work because at the time it executes on a full restart the network is not up for it yet
    • Not hard to fix, I just added a wait before the mount and that did the trick.
    • Now I am in control of the permissions and the timings of when it mounts.
    • So then i was able to move the other drives over. All 5 of the drives are now on the proxmox/OMV and shared out with Samba as needed to various locations. I have them searchable but they are not accessible without the user, pass. I will work on NFS in the future.
    • I was very much able to copy all of my shows to one drive before i migrated it over and then i was able to share the whole thing and repoint my plex and arr stack to it as needed. The speed difference over the network is noticeable but should not cause any problems in regards to streaming.
    • I also needed to disconnect BOTH of the 2.5 inch 250gb drives in order to get all 5 of the 8tb drives attached so one of the drives is exclusively used by proxmox for volumes and virtual drives. So i have one slot empty in the DAS and i might swap those 250 for some 1tbs and find a way to hook them to the other mini pc
    • With the drives all hooked up and all of my items now on there i also deployed a jellyfin server for testing purposes. This is setup on the second mini pc in a vm that i am also using for other things. I can setup the samba mounts in fstab on that one. It seems to work pretty well so far although i did try to passthrough the graphics portion of the apu for hardware acceleration but that did not go to plan and is something that i will need to follow up on later
    • Also finished off the spools of petg and moved on to the ABS that I had in storage. Happy to say that so far they are dry enough to print with. Still fun trying to work with ABS and how it warps can be interesting. Havent had problems with adhesion but I have had overhangs that warped. Might try some different supports and see how much that changes things.
    • I had some very small things to design and print and ABS is pretty good with that since it is a bit more rigid. A very tiny piece of one of my old crushers was missing so I had to design it and print it. It took a few iterations but I was able to do it and I am working on some mods for the earcups to make the thing a bit more comfortable.
    • It is missing one of the long screws but hopefully the added plastic and glue will keep it together. I will keep and eye out for a screw that is long enough however
    • in the end that 3d printed piece just was not enough to hold it together, by the time that i got it think enough to be sturdy it would no longer fit properly so i had to find a different solution. You can order that tiny part but it comes out to 12 or 13 dollars after taxes. So what i ended up doing was buy the most messed up set of crushers that i could find on ebay for 18 dollars which gets me a whole bunch of replacement parts. What is weird about that set is that neither of the hinges was broken. The slider assembly was loose and the battery wouldnt hold a charge
    • So easier to pull the hinge piece and the screws that i need and fix the other one with the sturdier 3d printed hinges. Worked out great and i still have a lot of extra parts or the chance to figure out a replacement for that tiny part if i want to fix another set
    • This is also in the time frame where my wife purchased me a new set that was on clearance. Pretty cool since the new ones are USB c. But that also leaves me free to experiment with the old ones and find out what works. If I destroy it its not really that much of a concern
    • I also need to take apart and rebuild the steel series arctis 9x that i use in my garage. The one side i had a temp fix for the split ring on came undone and the other side cracked. These headphones are not meant to be left on a headphone hanger, they will crack.
    • So I have 3d printed in ABS The left hand side of the headphones. I also got the split ring tool that should make it so that i can fix these things properly and have them stay together. The 3d printed earcups are much thicker and i hope sturdier. I am also thinking if i can add something to the outside of the prints in terms of decor.
    • This is also still a very hard swap to do. the mic does not like to be moved and there is a lot of solder joins that need to be tracked to make sure that they end up in the correct places.
    • I do like these headsets i am just not a fan of how easily the housing breaks. they do have some other issues that can pop up after some time but for the most part it seems like the plastic breaks.
  • Jim
    • Upgraded media desktop to Mint 22.0 using Mint Upgrade Tool; added Noble Numbat PPAs easily
    • Upgraded all three computers running Mint to 22.2 Zara
    • Set up Timeshift and Back In Time to auto-backup Sager Laptop afresh
    • Warpinator password on all three Linux Mint computers to enable file transfers
    • Troubleshooting external hard drive that one Mint desktop no longer recognizes
    • Internet Archive Downloader Firefox plugin to download books as a PDF
    • Installed Librera FD app from F-Droid to maintain zoomed in levels when turning pages of PDF books on Fire HD 8 tablet. Much more readable without margins. Kindle Paperwhite (6 inch) is too small to read PDFs.
    • Acquired Fire HD 10 tablet and stand for free. It’s oversized imho for handheld use even with hand strap, but has possible alternate use as kitchen counter top or bedroom device possibly with USB hub, mini-keyboard, & wireless mouse.
    • Acquired Samsung Galaxy A53 5G for free to eventually replace aging Pixel 2 XL with dying battery. Customizing screens and widgets to resemble Pixel.
    • Calendar Pad app not compatible with Android 15.! Exploring new calendar solution better than default Google calendar app. Etar & Fossify Calendar are close, but not same as Calendar Pad, which fits more items on agenda view. Does everyone else use calendar apps on phone or laptop/desktop?
    • Pocketcasts enshitification controversy with a small ad now added on some screens in the Android app, but still has best sync of played state between devices imho. No ads in the browser, or Firefox extensions eliminate them.
    • Tablo 4th gen. DVR working reliably to record OTA TV. Offline mode now available so one can still watch live and recorded tv in case internet goes out.
    • Recent Windows updates break Blu-ray and other protected video content playback on PC from Techspot.com
    • How to watch Blu-rays in Ubuntu and Linux Mint with menus using MakeMKV & VLC (From OMG Ubuntu) Only solution that works in my experience.
    • LED accent lighting added for background eye candy during evening podcasts
  • Majid
    • Back to work! Slow phased return. People happy to see me!
    • changed the CMOS battery in this Mint box. Wondered whether to change the ssd whilst in there.
    • Got more RAM for the server, turns out second slot does work!
    • OpenMediaVault troubles with Docker Almost killed the server! Finally got Jellyfin to work. Immich cant seem to get going (cant access library), they do have an install script.
    • Time to move over to Ubuntu server? Export the pools?
    • Dsitrohopping
      • Ubuntu Unity
      • Pop OS 24.04
      • CachyOS
    • Difficulty getting EmuDeck working onmy Steam Deck. Thinking of RetroPie on a pi400 (piAmiga)
    • Xiaomi Pad 7 – iPadOs 26-like
    • Retro purchases
    • Discovered Revanced
  • Bill
    • Got Immich up and running. Fantastic Google photo replacement!
    • Originally got Nextcloud AIO up and running on third big server. Works great but perhaps not a good solution for the family
    • third server is one of my spair Lenovo ThinkCentre’s M92P. Had to format manually with MBR because UEFI wasn’t implemented completely yet when the machine was released.
    • Had to nuke and pave – Reinstalled Windows 11 Pro because my main rig needed a Bios update. I believed a Bios update was all that was needed to get my new Intel ARC video card to work on this machine. I was wrong. The card still does not wok. This is an AMD chipset with integrated Radeon graphics. I have a nice AMD Radeon PRO WX7100 video card installed which works great, but the Linux driver has no access to the built in H.264 hardware encoder. I am forced instead to manually configure it to use VAAPI which I should be happy with, but I feel like I’m not getting all the use I paid for with this device. The ARC card works wonderfully on the other Intel-based machines I’ve built. I’m therefore considering switching to one of them for my main rig. The only thing stopping me is that they are 8th gen chipsets. The one that’s fully assembled is the I-5 middle of the road for it’s time. I’ve ordered the best I7 sky lake to replace it, since you can get them brand new for less than eighty bucks right now. I’ll report later on what I decide to do. I know I should just be happy with my Ryzen 7 and the use I can get from the Radeon Pro card, but I get irritated when things don’t work properly. I now have a Windows partition back on this machine, so I tested the card and found it does perform somewhat better with the Windows Pro driver. It all makes me want to throw the machine through the window.

Shape 1 — Play Vibrations Transition Bumper —

Vibrations from the Ether

20 minutes (~5 minutes each)

— Play Check This Transition Bumper —

Check This Out

10 minutes

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Wrap-up

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible:

  • Bill for our audio editing and for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
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  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>

— Play Closing Music and Standard Outro —

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